Designed to highlight your Apple AirPods Max while it’s charging without stealing any attention from it, the Max Stand is a sleek little third-party charger that sits on your desk like a flat rectangular coaster when not in use. However, pop your headphones onto it and they stand vertically almost like magic, while conveniently charging too!
The Max Stand has a simplistic elegance that you’d almost expect from Apple, before you realize that Apple’s solution for storing the headphones when not in use is a weird handbag-esque object that most people wouldn’t really want to carry around on display. The Max Stand, on the other hand, is simple, nondescript, and highlights the product it’s charging – making the AirPods Max look like an ornament on your desk that you can easily pick up and wear when you need.
Although the AirPods Max traditionally charge via a lightning port on the base of the headphones, the Max Stand replaces that with a MagSafe-style charging solution using a tiny magnetic charging pin that fits inside the AirPods Max’s lightning port. Once fitted in place, the headphones magnetically dock within the Max Stand and instantly begin charging when the magnets align to create the connection. It’s not different from the MagSafe found on MacBooks, albeit in a smaller version that interfaces with the lightning connector.
The AirPods Max pair instantly with the Max Stand once they dock in place for the first time. The pairing is permanent too, and doesn’t need to be configured over and over again. The process is about as elegant as the stand is – the magnets are strong enough to keep the headphones standing vertically every time, and they also ensure the connector pins line up every single time, so you don’t need to fiddle with chargers, cables, ports, and the like. Pop the AirPods Max on the stand and that’s about it. The headphones charge as long as they’re on the stand, and as a result, are always at 100% battery when you need them. (The Max Stand obviously regulates the charge to make sure the headphones don’t get overcharged or the battery doesn’t deplete)
A closer look at the charging pin that sits inside the AirPods Max’s lightning port. The tiny accessory practically blends into the headphones’ large form, becoming invisible once plugged in, and giving your AirPods Max some neat MagSafe-style charging powers. The Max Stand even comes with a separate magnetic-style charging cable that you can carry around when you’re traveling with your AirPods Max. On the off chance that you DO end up using Apple’s weird handbag-case, the separate magnetic charging cable lets you connect your headphones to any USB port to charge it, whether it’s on your laptop or a power bank.
The Max Stand sports a metal-meets-soft-plastic aesthetic that complements the AirPods Max’s design almost perfectly. The upper half of the stand uses a soft plastic that comes in 5 different colors to perfectly match the color on your AirPods Max’s headband, while the stand’s base uses stainless steel for weight and durability. The ground plate alone weighs in at around 240g or 8 ounces, giving your Max Stand a bit of weight so your headphones don’t ever topple over. The overall build feels stable, robust, and reliable while championing a design that’s sleek and downright ingenious in a way that one can occasionally expect from great third-party brands like Satechi and Twelve South, if not Apple itself!
Designer: floating pixels GmbH
